Can I just add a small suggestion for the second screen, sector out the bottom of that ceiling architecture (red cross) by 4px then give it a brown flat as a lining. It will give the upper texture a feeling that it has some actual thickness opposed to looking paper thin, this builds on the concept of treating textures like materials =)

Have just PM'd out an updated version of the texture pack (Version 48)

If I missed you or you feel you should have it, PM me or post here and I'll send it out to you.

@Pottus Looks good. New version of the texture pack has the horizontal SHAWN support texture you requested. Well two actually. See what you think.

@Mionic. Dude, sometimes your texturing can sometimes be a bit random, but your mapping is always unique, and usually epic. Styx and Stones, for my money, is the most epic map in the set so far. And that map 30 puzzle area you have created has me all intrigued. Good stuff.

I was pulling my hair out at first actually "what the f**k is wrong with this?" CTRL-Z'ed about 200 times still had the same problem lol! I'm willing to bet if I didn't have a dry socket from getting my wisdom teeth pulled last Monday I would have realized sooner it's been a particularly painful day today.

Edit - Done the layout today so it should be within a week before the map is submitted for testing. I don't really have a name for the map yet but I built on the quarry style concept that was originally proposed.

Made some decent progress on Spider Colony today. I think I will be sending the first draft to playtesters tomorrow if I can throw in some additional secrets, fix a few niggles, tweak the gameplay and implement difficulty flags.

I've taken some pics in GZDoom but I've tested for VPOs (none) and SEGS (some, hopefully not crippling) in chocorenderlimits:

I've enjoyed working with the texture pack by the way. Any takers for testing?

purist said:
Made some decent progress on Spider Colony today. I think I will be sending the first draft to playtesters tomorrow if I can throw in some additional secrets, fix a few niggles, tweak the gameplay and implement difficulty flags.

I've taken some pics in GZDoom but I've tested for VPOs (none) and SEGS (some, hopefully not crippling) in chocorenderlimits:

I've enjoyed working with the texture pack by the way. Any takers for testing?

Looks pretty good, I like the texture diversity it gives the screens (as small as they are) a distinction from other maps although TheMionicDonut's map does a pretty good job at this as well.

I'll get it as complete as possible this weekend before sending to the playtesters.

@Kyka:

Spoiler:

I'd be disappointed to lose those eye screen textures. I've used them in three areas and are a kind of theme. They seemed a good techbase/Hell crossover point. You're the boss though and if it's going to spoil the last map I'll find a replacement for them

@Pottus:

It's probably not as thematically diverse as it seems in the screens. I found the 'Hellish techbase' brief set by Whoo quite a challenge as the two themes are in danger of contrasting in a harsh jarring way. So there's two themes to my map. Rustic metal base and rocky caverns with hints of Hell.

Even though I am not listed as an 'official' tester, I have already done a lot of testing for this mapset. And I did say to whoo ages ago that I would be a tester for this. The only reason I haven't really pursued fully my testing duties and why I haven't been put down as an 'official' tester, is that, between my own mapping and working with other mappers and doing the texture pack, I haven't had the time to test every single map, even though I want to. Dammit.

But my mapping is nearly finished, and the texture pack is getting towards finished, and once that happens then I will get whoo to put me down as an official tester, and I will be testing all the maps at that point, even though I have tested a lot already.

...If I ever get through making changes to the texture pack that is !

But you are right, I am not listed as an 'official' tester, even though I am pretty much testing a lot already.

purist said:

Spoiler:

I'd be disappointed to lose those eye screen textures. I've used them in three areas and are a kind of theme. They seemed a good techbase/Hell crossover point. You're the boss though and if it's going to spoil the last map I'll find a replacement for them

Spoiler:

OK. Let's leave those eyes in your map for now, and we can always make a final decision later. I would probably rather we keep them for level 30, but I am open to using them perhaps elsewhere also. Generally whoo seems happy enough to let me make a lot of the decisions regarding textures and themes, but in the end, whoo has the final decision on this. So if I decide to only reserve the eyes for level 30, you can always appeal to whoo, seeing as he is the higher authority in this project that me. :)

The only thing I will say is maybe take down the screens with the eyes in them. That way, we won't show the eyes to everyone before we release the final mapset.

And they are good looking screens. Thanks for your work. There is possibly a couple of texture choices I am not sold on, but it looks like a really unique and fun map. :)

Please don't feel like you need to hunour me on this Kyka, I'm not too precious about them. I don't know what context they are used in MAP30 so you are better placed to make the call then I am. My own opinion is that if they foreshadow MAP30 then that should be OK as it adds consistency and depth to the mapset... but if are not in a similar context so are at crossed purposes or they remove the impact of seeing them for the first time in the last map I concede that they have to go.

Concerning the eyes, you can keep them in the map, but stick to one variation (ex: don't use COMPEYE1 in one spot and COMPEYE3 in another spot.) The use of it in your map can foreshadow the boss, which the player will be reminded of in MAP30 when they start seeing the eyes again.

Also TheMionicDonut I'm currently trying to navigate the puzzle in your map. It's quite nice, but with a few problems. I'll detail them in a PM.

TheMionicDonut said:
It doesnt say you are a tester Kyka.

He's always been an "unoffical" tester. Regardless, I'll go ahead and add him to the list.

I've sent Spider Colony to the playtesters Kyka mentioned. My main concern with the level is a SEG overflow in the central rocky area that I am hoping is either unintrusive or simply fixed. I'd also like some feedback on it's difficulty as I'm not sure if it's correctly pitched amongst the other E3 maps.

Map doesn't work in Chocolate Doom Purist, I'm trying to find the problem. Can't really find anything during preliminary analysis so that means I need to take a divide and conquer approach lets see if I can find the infringement.

I found it, Linedef 2202, 2198 had unknown texture RDDP01, DB2's error checking does look for unknown textures but excludes any unknown textures on non-visible linedefs so the texture won't appear in the used textures either this was the source of the crash on this map.

Ok quick overview, there seems to be a lot of of missing Upper-unpegged on this map and bad Y-Alignments particularly on the ROCK5 and some of the REDROCK1 it shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to fix all this I would think it's very straight forward. As for the seg overflow I can't find it or just don't see it at any rate I think your good for SEGS and visplanes on this map. I'll give a review of game play a bit later.

Review:

- Zombies don't wake up when you shoot at the start kinda strange
- You can hide in the secret near sector 295 no monsters can get in or effectively shoot in because of the torch
- No consequences for taking rocket launcher, plasma, BFG, or SSG
- Plasma and Rocket launcher are too close together
- METAL2 panels have TEKWALLG on the sides which I thought was bad use of material design
- Un-natural blocking near sector 104 and 248 recommending using a MID-TEXTURE on those windows
- Cyberdemon presented little challenge, you can lure him out and shoot from on the ledge while his rockets hit the wall preventing him from leaving the room he is in would be much more difficult.
- Ammo at end of map was way too low I didn't have anything to fight off the arachnotrons
- Also about ammo I found my self doing quite a bit of hunting and it got tedious having to back track to find more

Concerning the eyes, you can keep them in the map, but stick to one variation (ex: don't use COMPEYE1 in one spot and COMPEYE3 in another spot.) The use of it in your map can foreshadow the boss, which the player will be reminded of in MAP30 when they start seeing the eyes again.

Also TheMionicDonut I'm currently trying to navigate the puzzle in your map. It's quite nice, but with a few problems. I'll detail them in a PM.

He's always been an "unoffical" tester. Regardless, I'll go ahead and add him to the list.

Spoiler:

Do you want me to use COMPEYE more often in map30? I can put it in a few places. Also, you want me to drop one or two in map28? They werent part of the texture pack when I made the map.

Also, New testing version forthcoming, it makes the puzzle a little less...impossible.

I've read EVERY post in this thread over the last few days, and I love everything thats happened since I first posted back in 2009. Cant beleive my suggestion to touch up the textures (which back then was mocked quite a bit) was eventually taken seriously and thus influenced the entire project. As im not a mapper and just another player, it brought a tear to my eye :)

I post from a Vita so I can't type amazingly large things, but Map 20 looks to be my favourite, for obvious reasons. For the music, at least one TNT remix was made, gives me hope fr Wormhole's amazing track, Death's Bells, to be kept in or remixed. Thanks for starting it at Last Call, TNT always did imply there was more to it.

Thirdly, the suggestion of the TNT community project to match Plutonia, if it happens please consider using the name I suggested for this project back when it was just TNT2, I suggested TNT: Revilution. It'd match Plutonia Revisited! (Evilution Revisited) I know its probably years away, but hey!

And in closing, a more oersonal bit, thanks Kyka for taking that suggestion seriously, nice to know my thoughts can indeed matter to projects in progress, even if I have no ability to make anything myself *replies to your reply a looong time ago* My computer never did get fixed :(

Yes, apologies. I had been checking Chocorenderlimits throughout development but didn't do a final check before some relatively minor amendments and the RDDP01 bug has seeped in. Thanks for making the other playtesters aware - it's a very quick fix to get it running in vanilla but if the other playtesters prefer I can reupload with the fix.

Pottus said:
Ok quick overview, there seems to be a lot of of missing Upper-unpegged on this map and bad Y-Alignments particularly on the ROCK5 and some of the REDROCK1 it shouldn't take more than 30 minutes to fix all this I would think it's very straight forward.

I'm not the biggest stickler on texture alignment in natural areas but I will look at improving this at some point.

Pottus said:
- Zombies don't wake up when you shoot at the start kinda strange
- You can hide in the secret near sector 295 no monsters can get in or effectively shoot in because of the torch

I'll remove the block sound lines to sort the first point and remove the torch to solve the second one. Easy fixes.

Pottus said:
- No consequences for taking rocket launcher, plasma, BFG, or SSG
- Plasma and Rocket launcher are too close together

I'm not concerned over either of these points. By MAP25 the player should have all of these weapons so I don't think there is any problems with them being freely available this late in the megawad. There's not enough ammo for the player to go crazy with any one weapon anyway.

Pottus said:
- METAL2 panels have TEKWALLG on the sides which I thought was bad use of material design
- Un-natural blocking near sector 104 and 248 recommending using a MID-TEXTURE on those windows

I've happy to swap the TEKWALLG texture but I'm not adding a midtexture as it would not look aethetically pleasing to me. It's not unusual for blocking lines to be used on windows you could otherwise step through. I don't think this will confuse players.

Pottus said:
- Cyberdemon presented little challenge, you can lure him out and shoot from on the ledge while his rockets hit the wall preventing him from leaving the room he is in would be much more difficult.

I'll do some playtesting around this and see if I can find a solution but I'm not blocking him in that small room as the fight would effectively be re-designed as peek-a-boo.

Pottus said:
- Ammo at end of map was way too low I didn't have anything to fight off the arachnotrons
- Also about ammo I found my self doing quite a bit of hunting and it got tedious having to back track to find more

I don't mind adding extra shells and bullets to the arachnotron areas. I never encountered the same ammo issues in playtesting but at that stage in the level resource management is not an intended factor.

Earlier in the map it's more about ammo scavanging than ammo hunting. There's not really enough ammo to max out any of the guns so there's no reason to leave any behind. If you're picking all the ammo up before leaving the area you're in you should do OK, if you find the secrets you should be comfortable.

I do plan to add more secrets and be kinder on ammo for the lower difficulties so this problem should fix itself anyway.

Thanks for your notes so far Pottus. Despite the list I don't think there's too much that can't be easily fixed. Thanks also to hawkwind who has PM'd me his notes. All of his points sound sensible and easily implemented.

Sounds good Purist, I just said what I thought, Hawkwind is better than me at identifying game play flaws I'm more attuned to aesthetics. Anyways I can do a realignment on that map if your would like, primarily as mentioned ROCK5 and REDROCK1.

Also, you said Hawkwinds points all sound sensible and easily implemented does that make all my points non-sense? LOL! :D